Flight Friday: Middle East War Drives Sharp Drop In Engine Flight Cycles

As the Middle East conflict lingers on without an imminent resolution, this week’s Flight Friday highlights its potential impact on the engine aftermarket as the number of cycles completed by aircraft has dropped.

Comparing March 2025 to March 2026, we can see which engine OEMs have been impacted the most.

The passenger in-service fleet (ISF) split between narrowbody and widebody is almost 50/50; however, with the Airbus A380 having four engines, the engine ISF is larger for the widebody market, making the widebody vs narrowbody split 55/45.

With the outbreak of the conflict, almost all engine groups have been impacted; it is the mature engines, powering the widebody aircraft, that have been impacted the most. 

The Pratt & Whitney PW4000 and GE CF6 engines have had the largest negative change; their fleet size is small. Staying with the widebody theme, GE’s GENX and GE90, which power several Boeing 787s and 777s, respectively, are down about half.

The Rolls-Royce Trent collection, powering anything from an Airbus A330 up to an A380, has fared reasonably well; however, it is the Trent 1000 that powers the 787 that is helping the numbers, as flight cycles are only down a third, whereas the XWB powering the A350 is down two-thirds.

The Engine Alliance GP7000, which powers the bulk of the A380 fleet, is down less than 50%. The Trent-powered A380s are only down 55%, showing that Middle East operators are using them, where they can, to move lots of people on a single flight.

The narrowbody fleet has also been impacted, with a pattern similar to the widebody, where legacy powered aircraft are being used a little less, with IAE’s V2500 and CFM’s CFM56 taking the biggest drop.

The CFM Leap-powered aircraft remain active, but there is also a slightly larger ISF, which offsets some of the drop. The Pratt PW1000G (GTF) has increased, but again, this is primarily a function of fleet size, as the fleet is almost twice as large in March 2026 compared to 2025.

This data was put together using Aviation Week’s Tracked Aircraft Utilization database.